Politics of Models, Measurements and Comparisons

The Section analyses political, institutional, and theoretical aspects of policy models, measurements and global comparisons in governance. Different measurements and numerical objectifications such as rankings and indicators are influential in creating policy models and political imaginaries, resulting in a variety of practices and instruments of governance that circulate transnationally. Also practices of economic modeling, regulatory governance and policy initiatives such as open data are good examples of policy instruments that are spreading globally. This Section addresses the tendency to produce and compare policy choices with policy models and measurements that come to limit decision-making on different levels of governance. Moreover, the role of epistemic communities and advocacy networks in creating and disseminating the comparative knowledge will be examined. Thus, we also analyze how policy ideas, norms and practices diffuse from one context to another, what mechanisms facilitate this and to what institutional effect. We welcome papers that address policy ideas, models and comparisons, mechanisms of diffusion, politics of counting and classification, practices of modeling and regulatory governance.